Europe is hungry for more kid-producing couples. Population growth is important for any society to continue forward. The problem is, Europe is dealing with slowing growth rates. People simply aren’t having as many babies as they once did. That leaves many countries to figure out ways to get people reproducing again. Money seems to do the trick.
Hungary is one country looking to make a huge difference. Their government is very pro-family and seems to understand the important of a booming population. Their Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, came up with the idea to give a nice chunk of change to couples to encourage them to have children.
He’s offering couples about $33,000 USD to have kids. It’s given to them as a loan, but it’s a loan they don’t have to pay back if they have at least three kids. This is a great move for a country that is showing the slowest birth rate of all European countries. There are plenty of other pro-family subsidies as well. So far, many thousands of families have applied.
After receiving the loan, they would have to start paying it back monthly. If they have their first kid within the first five years of receiving it, then all interest is suspended as is all repayments for another three years. This should really encourage a lot of young couples to start procreating and, in turn, they would receive a large loan in which to start their family.
Hungary Loan Criteria
As with anything else, there’s a certain criteria a family must meet before applying for this loan. First is that the couple must be married. They also want to make sure that the marriage is the first one for at least one of the spouses, so if both people have been married before, that won’t work. They also want to make sure that the woman involved is between 18 and 40 and that at least one part of the couple has been paying taxes in the country for at least 180 days.
There are a few downsides to accepting the loan, such as consequences if you don’t produce a child in time. If you don’t have your first child within five years, then you would have to pay back the full loan within the next 4 months. That is unless you have a medical certificate proving you found out you’re unable to have children.
Handing out loans isn’t the only way Hungary is proving to be pro-family. The allow for as much as $135,000 USD in mortgage write-offs. Of course, it depends on the number of children you have. One child will grant a $33,000 write-off. Each child allows for an additional write-off that makes having kids worth it to many.
“In Hungary, we believe in strong families as the basis of our community. We have driven family-friendly governance and gained two-third parliamentary majority three times in a row at democratic general elections. Hungarian citizens have many times expressed they will and entitled us to stop illegal migration at our borders, not to let in a mass of economic migrants but instead empower Hungarian women and men to be able to have as many children as they wish to and have them as soon as they wish to,” she said.
